The New Age Politics of Intolerance

Indian Politics is funny, the way it tries to demolish Democracy, and its very cause of existence can be a classic case study. Leave alone the bigwigs who cannot bear being questioned; even the smaller fish are increasingly intolerant to scrutiny.

I had an interesting experience with some Aam Aadmi Party folks on Twitter and have decided to share it with you.

It started with this tweets by someone with the twitter handled @KasinathVK:

Translated: The Director of Swiss bank has said that Rs 280,00,000,000,000 of India’s money is deposited in their Swiss Bank.

Indian Politicians stashing away their hard earned black money in Swiss Banks is now in public domain. However, what struck me here was the mention of the phrase ‘Director of Swiss Bank’, as if it was implied that it was the Director (or one from the Board of Directors) of the Swiss Bank who made the statement.

However, there is just one catch here. No single bank is called Swiss bank and many banks operating in Switzerland are collectively referred as the Swiss Banks. Was the person who tweeted this actually aware of this or not?

So, I replied to his tweet, asking which director of which Swiss Bank?

Though I did not hear from @KasinathVK, I got a reply from @Janlokpaal. It asked me what did I mean and whether I was trying to protect Modi. I told them that all I wanted to know was the name of the Swiss Bank in question and the Director’s name.

So basically they quoted some Director of the Swiss Bank disclosing NPR information but were clueless when it came to substantiate their. And we are supposed to blindly believe what they say without questioning.

All this when I did not even mention Modi ! They just assumed that if I dared to question them, I must be a Modi supporter.

The prime reason of writing this post is not the money in Swiss banks; but the way AAP, with their twitter mouthpiece @janlokpaal reacted to a question. They flooded me with replies, none of them relevant. I was called a Modi’s bootlicker, corrupt, evil etc but did not get the answer I wanted, or even an indication that they knew the answer.

What kind of politics is this? One assumes a moral high ground, becomes a self styled savior of the nation, and starts deriding all those who hold a different political view; or even those who dare to question them? AAP reminded me of a certain Didi for whom, all political dissidents are Naxals and all crimes are actually set ups by the opposition to defame her.

At one point this guy even said that the people, who vote for Modi are evil, corrupt and anti-national conveniently forgetting that it is the public which elects, is totally free to elect and cannot be insulted based on its choice. By abusing the masses who vote for a certain politician, which ‘You’ think is not good enough, one can only show his mental bankruptcy. Does such childishness have the right or qualification to become Bharat Bhagya Vidhata?

Fighting corruption is a good thing, but it cannot be done with half-truths and full lies. The means needs to be as good as the goal and some people in AAP need to understand this. They are not the sole flag-bearers of nationalism and patriotism and need to respect the first principle of democracy, that is, respecting others’ views and questions.

Friend .. India is in mental crises .. lack of spiritualism has made people short-tempered and conclusive and reactive as well.. I face these fanatics on my website very frequently ..indicating there disliking about my cartoon on Modi or any other person..I give them back – and Pyaar Se 🙂 because I know people with limited knowledge can be provoked easily and calmed down more easily. They rage a war when they find contradicting thoughts .. i have seen ppl on social media sites of all sorts ..
Those who want change are reluctant to change their own thoughts,first !!
What blaming Modi and Manmohan Singh ? Are they not part of the same society ? Changing administrators may or may not help but changing thought processes will surely !!

EternalRebel

Very true. These self proclaimed revolutionaries will prove to be as counterproductive as the Taliban.